


Sad, Squishy Scientist

by justanotherreader



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Chubby Carlos, Fast Food, Hospitals, M/M, Overweight, Sad, Scientist Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), food addiction, justanotherreader, obesity, overweight carlos, sad squishy scientist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherreader/pseuds/justanotherreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insecure and constantly worried about his personal health, Carlos finally opens up to Cecil about his obese childhood and the heart attack that changed his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sad, Squishy Scientist

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. So this is the first fanfic I've written in a realllllllly long time. I used to write them a lot (under another name), and was fairly popular, but then I just kinda dropped off the face of the earth. I'm writing my own stories now, but I needed to break away for a day and wrote something unrelated. So here, Night Vale, something kinda sorta sad for you to like (at least, I hope you like it).
> 
> If you could leave me constructive (not destructive!) notes or whatever, it would help me improve my writing. Just don't act like a child and call me names. I've had my fair share of that, and frankly, I won't hesitate to report you for any abuse you send my way. That said, enjoy reading.

Sad, Squishy Scientist  
2013  
By justanotherreader

 

He squished his belly a little too tightly and sighed, disappointed by what he saw in the narrow, slightly broken mirror attached to the door. He was by no means an athletic guy, nor did he ever want to be, but he couldn't help but wonder if he ought to be spending more time at the gym, despite the weird howling heard from Locker #567. 

The soft, warm pudge sticking to his bones made him feel so ugly, so inadequate. It clung to his jaw and cheeks. It held on for dear life to his legs. It made his butt jiggle a little more than he'd like. He wasn't the picture of perfect health, and it scared him, even after all these years.

"Cecil?" he called hesitantly. He half hoped no answer would come his way, but then his lover’s sonorous voice called back,

"Yes, Mr. Perfect?" Jesus Christ. Of course he would answer like that. Carlos cringed and asked,

"Why do you always say I'm perfect and beautiful?" The tone behind the question was low and sad, but Cecil didn’t hear it that way. Instead, he smiled as he tore himself from the latest report he'd received via text message....mostly Dog Park drama gossip from Dana....and made his way over to Carlos, still handling his own tubby belly disapprovingly.

"Because you are, silly." Cecil poked the dark man’s stomach playfully. "How cute are you! You're so lovely."

"But I'm not. It's...you don't find this disgusting in the least?" Carlos asked, feeling his eyebrows furrow in confusion.

"No. Of course not." Cecil grabbed Carlos' cheeks and smooshed them. "And even if I did, these chubby little cheeks don't define you or my love for you. They just beg for kisses!"

Carlos didn't smile. Instead he gently took his lover’s heavily tattooed wrists and pulled them away. He swore he could feel his own warm, greasy fat oozing between those fingers. It made him feel sick.

"Where's my shirt?" He asked absently. "I need to cover up."

"You don't need to. You look perfectly fine."

"Please, don't call me perfect. I'm not."

Cecil was having none of it. Unaware he was making Carlos feel no better about his body, he said, "To me you are. No one here cares if you're a little chubby."

The scientist was done with this conversation. Raising his voice louder than he intended, he snapped, "Cecil, I swear to god. Where is my fucking shirt."

His boyfriend rolled his eyes. Carlos rarely got angry, though he did have a tendency to be sensitive at times. For some reason, his weight bothered him the most, but not like this. He kept himself covered, not daring to let the outside world see his naked skin. But his face was lovely and his hair was perfect (”no, it’s not,” he thought glumly every time Cecil announced it over the radio.) He was usually a scattered mess, he thought of himself. Cecil probably just had perfecto vision. It made things look nicer than they were, like those ‘skinny’ mirrors at malls.

Carlos found the tattered Star Trek shirt he'd bought for ten cents during grad school, and pulled it over his head. He climbed into his bed and flipped on the TV to watch Night Vale’s long anticipated Doctor Who Marathon of the Month. David Tennant. The first man he'd fallen truly in love with. Of course Cecil didn't need to know this.

"Carlos?" Cecil sat beside his dark lover, finally aware that something was amiss. "What's wrong?"

Carlos sighed and shook his head. "Nothing."

A sigh. He took the scientist’s hand and squeezed. "Nice try, sweetheart. One more chance."

Carlos groaned and knocked his head against the headboard. "Don't do this, not now. Look, this is the episode where he cures all the sick people in the space cat nunnery or whatever. Just watch it with me, it’s incred--"

Cecil flipped the TV off immediately, straddled his partner and glared into his dark brown eyes.

" Tell. Me. What's. Wrong."

"Damn it." Carlos muttered. He tried to push Cecil off, but the man was too strong for him. He may have had an average build, but he had abnormal strength. Carlos leaned back and sighed.

"Fine. I have a hard time believing you,” he admitted with a pout. “It's difficult to think of myself as beautiful and perfect."

"And how is this possible?"

"Cecil..."

"Explain!" The broadcaster said in a Dalek voice. An actual, honest-to-god Dalek voice. He did enjoy mimicking voices after all. Carlos’ pout deepened, but Cecil refused to budge. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Not Dana, not Old Woman Josie, not anyone who listens to my show. Just talk to me.”

"I used to be bullied," Carlos spat out, unable to find any other way out of this mess. "A lot. By all the kids in school. Even my family picked on me."

Cecil smiled. "It can't have been so bad, all kids are-"

"I used to weigh over three hundred pounds. I have diabetes."

Cecil was suddenly silent. He stared into his perfect Carlos' face with a gaping mouth, then climbed off and sat down on the bed. Carlos watched for another reaction, expecting it to erupt, but Cecil merely waited in silence for the next part. Carlos continued.

"It's partly genetic, but mostly situational. I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic city. We were poor and didn’t have much access to healthier foods. We had junk food available to us everywhere. My abuela-I mean, my grandmother, made fried food often. Mama brought cheeseburgers, French fries, fried chicken, sandwiches and onion rings…oh god. Wow. She brought it all home every Saturday, when pay checks arrived, and anytime food stamps came in. I was eating like that guy on the Food Network...Adam something? It was normal for us. But my brother and sisters had faster metabolisms and more friends. More reasons to run around and walk to the mall. I had no one, so I stayed home, watched TV and ate when I was bored."

Cecil listened intently, hardly able to believe it. His Carlos, addicted to food and television? No friends to speak of? No place to hang out? Simply unbelievable. Carlos continued, ignoring the shocked look on his lover’s face.

"All through grade school, I was teased and tormented by my siblings, and even my parents when they got sick of looking at me. Teachers told me I was going to end up in a hospital if I didn’t start eating a salad everyday. I can't tell you what kids did to me, but let’s just say I went home with a bruised belly and a desire to eat the physical pain away every afternoon in my room with the curtains drawn and the door locked. I cried all the time.”

Carlos paused to wipe his eyes. He hated crying, hated looking weak. Cecil offered him a handkerchief (he somehow always seems to have one ready, Carlos thought absently).

“There were other obese people in my life, but my Abuela was the largest, much larger than me. She told me to kick their asses when I came home crying, but I didn't. I couldn't. My only advantage was my weight, but it was impossible to sit on someone. I couldn’t walk or turn around fast enough.”

He paused again to shudder away a sob clawing at his throat. These were awful memories. Why had he brought these up at all? 

“High school was…it was where I discovered I loved science. I'd read all the books, completed assignments early thanks to the prescheduled syllabus, and I watched as many videos about anything I could get my hands on. But I continued to eat while watching, or in between taking notes. It was just automatic. And you would think that, as a science-loving dork, I’d understand that my weight and the food I loved was killing me. But it didn’t click."

Cecil kissed Carlos’ cheek and squeezed his hand gently: a reminder that he was safe here, that he wasn’t being judged. "So...how did you lose it? Was it…um. Naturally?” God, he could be awkward when he was worried. Carlos fought the urge to snap at the somewhat offensive question and just kept going.

He squeezed back and sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. "I won three scholarships to Harvard. I used them all to attend, got a part time job cleaning the labs and used my hard-earned money for more food. Cambridge is…well, Boston in general is full of great little places. I was eating alone at this excellent Middle Eastern place when my heart suddenly started to prick and squeeze. I immediately recognized the pain as a heart attack thanks to a medical course I took for fun. I told the lady at the counter to call 911. Then I started to really feel it. My left arm went numb. I was so scared. I was convinced I would die right there, with no memory of my life other than piles of fatty food and greased stained textbook pages."

"No!" Cecil cried as he grabbed Carlos' cheeks again. "No, that didn't happen. Not to you."

"But it did," Carlos replied softly. "I was...oh god. I was 22." He wanted to throw up. "An ambulance arrived just as I started to feel myself slipping away. I learned later that it took the crew, plus five or six random guys walking by to lift me onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. They saved me, obviously, but when I woke up, there was more bad news. The doctor came in and sat beside me, and I knew something was wrong by the thick folder in his hands, and the grim look on his face. He told me that I could have died. That I was too young for a heart attack. He asked me my name, and handed me a phone from across the room. He told me I had to make a very difficult phone call and tell her that…that I was…oh god.”

Carlos stopped and started to sniffle into the handkerchief. He hated remembering this part the most, hated the humiliation that came with it. “He…he told me I needed to tell my mother myself, because I needed to own and accept a new disease in my life, and she needed to own it, too. He told me that I was a diabetic and had the potential to lose limbs. And that I would have another heart attack if I didn’t lose weight. And even after all these years, I’m still sick. I'm still paying off that one fucking emergency." His eyes, bright with tears, looked skyward as he tried to keep them from streaking down his cheeks. “My mother didn’t take the call. Abuela answered instead. I’d never heard her cry the way she did when I told her. ‘My little baby,’ she wailed over and over. ‘My little baby child, you cannot die.’ She started praying over the phone for my soul. Begged God to save me from myself.”

Cecil cringed and pulled his now-weeping partner into a tight embrace. "Carlos, oh sweet, beautiful Carlos, darling, it's okay. I'll help you if you want me to. You're okay now."

Carlos shook his head. "Cecil, I'm not okay. I'm always afraid that one day, I’ll just eat everything I see in the hopes it’ll kill me for real. And even though I lost 200 pounds, it took five years. It's not instant. It took me a year just to learn to eat correctly. I still struggle. I want junk food all the time. That's why I chew gum constantly. Lavender gum keeps me calm and focused. But I think about it all the time. That fucking Arby’s down the street taunts me, Cecil. I’ve wanted to go there every day since I arrived here. They have all my comfort foods.” He groaned. “Shit. Now I want them. Have you ever dreamed about mozzarella sticks, Cecil? It’s incredible and horrible at the same time.”

“No,” Cecil snapped lovingly. “I’ll make us some tea, if you’d like.” When Carlos didn’t respond, Cecil climbed back onto his lap and took his face in his hands. “Hey. Look at me.” The dark scientist did so reluctantly, like a puppy who’d been caught making a mess. “I think you’re the most beautiful man in the universe. You’re smart, you’re imaginative and wonderful to be around. I don’t care if you weigh 150 pounds or 300 pounds. You are you, and you are important. Don’t beat yourself up about a bit of chubbiness. You’re, like, what? 41? We’re all a little chubby by the time we’re 41.”

“But—“

“No buts, no cuts, no coconuts,” Cecil interrupted. “You are perfect, Carlos. I know I say it a lot, and I mean it, but now, I want you to start saying to yourself.”

“But—“

“When you’re working, tell yourself you’re perfect. When you’re eating, tell yourself you’re perfect. When you go out friends, or see a movie, or blow up a project by accident, you tell yourself that you are perfect.”

“But!”

“What are you, Carlos?”

“Don’t do this.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that. Try again.”

“Cecil.”

“Sorry?”

“Goddamn it.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“I’m perfect,” Carlos gave in. “There, I said it. Can I watch Doctor Who now?”

“Only if you promise you’ll say it everyday.”

Carlos glared into Cecil’s eyes, having gotten used to the glowing white pupils only a few weeks earlier. Despite the blankness, he could see the concern and love in the broadcaster’s heart spilling from them. He couldn’t help it as the corners of his lips tugged into a small smile.

“Okay. I promise. I’m perfect, if you believe so.”

“Good. You’re no longer trapped in a heavy body. Be happy that you’re free, Carlos. You can do so much more with who you are now, and you should be proud of your achievements. Promise you’ll be proud of yourself?”

Carlos let his smile grow, and he nodded. “Yes, okay. I promise. And you have to make sure I know I’m beautiful when I don’t think so myself.”

“Deal.” Cecil pressed a kiss to his lover’s forehead, then flipped over and fell into Carlos’ lap, turned the TV back on, and allowed the scientist to resume the marathon, which, it seemed, had jumped from one clump of scenes to another. The Doctor jerked about unpredictably and cackled,

“Goodness me, I'm a man. Yum. So many parts! And hardly used... Ah.. ah! Two hearts! Oh, baby, I'm beating out a samba!...Ooh, he's slim. And a little bit foxy. You've thought so too. I've been inside your head...You've been looking... you like it.” Cecil looked up at Carlos and added quietly,

“I sure do, Doctor. I sure do.”

Carlos just laughed as his red, sad eyes did their best to ignore the glowing sign of the treacherous Arby’s waiting patiently down the street.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note: Please read the comments above if you have not already. Thanks for reading!


End file.
